Conventionally, there is known an inverted pendulum type vehicle, in which a base body assembled with a traveling motion unit which travels on a floor surface and an actuator unit which drives the traveling motion unit, is also assembled with a payload supporting part of an occupant which is capable of freely tilting with respect to the perpendicular direction. The inverted pendulum type vehicle is a vehicle with a necessity to move the traveling motion unit in a manner to move a fulcrum of the inverted pendulum, so as to maintain a tilt angle of the payload supporting part to a desired tilt angle (so as to prevent the payload supporting part from fall due to tilting).
As a control technology of this type of the inverted pendulum type vehicle, for example, the one found in Patent Document 1 had been proposed by the present applicant.
In the Patent Document 1, there is disclosed a control technology of an inverted pendulum type vehicle in which a base body of a vehicle assembled with a payload supporting part of an occupant is provided so as to be freely tiltable about two axes, specifically about one axis in a longitudinal direction and about the other axis in a lateral direction, with respect to the ball-shaped traveling motion unit. In this technology, the vehicle is made to travel by determining a torque command value of an electric motor as the actuator, so as to converge a measured value of a tilt angle of the payload supporting part (tilt angles about two axis of a fore-and-aft direction and a lateral direction) to a necessary desired tilt angle, and also to converge a measured value of a traveling velocity in the fore-and-aft direction and the lateral direction of the vehicle to a desired velocity, and performing operation control of the electric motor in accordance with the torque command value.
The present applicant further proposes vehicles capable of functioning as the inverted pendulum type vehicle, such as those found in Patent Document 2 and 3.